Wesleyan may be renowned for its open-minded students, but there’s only one place on campus where you’ll hear poodle sex, decoupage, Hitler, and Santa Claus discussed freely—the stage of a comedy show. Wesleyan is home to three improv troupe—Gag Reflex, Desperate Measures, and New Teen Force—plus one scripted sketch comedy group, Lunchbox.
Gag Reflex, made up of Austin Purnell ’08, Larissa Slovin ’08, Jessalee Landfried ’07, Adam Read-Brown ’07, Corey Harrower ’07, Jesse Young ’06, and Seth Samuels ’06, is the University’s oldest Improv Troupe, celebrating its 15th anniversary this spring.
“We do a lot of different games, especially during our end-of-the-semester shows in the Science Center,” Young said. “But mostly we use the Armando, which involves taking a random word from the audience and creating a monologue related to that word. From there we create scenes from or inspired by the monologue.”
Desperate Measures, comprised of Dana Raviv ’06, Michael Gottwald ’06, Jess Lane ’06, Tom Bendon ’07, and Rene Wachner-Solomon ’07, takes a different improvisational tack. While known for short-form games that rely on one-liners and quick thinking, the group has recently been experimenting.
“We’re doing a lot more prepared sketches as well as improv, things as varied as original song and dance numbers and traditional sketches,” Lane said. “If you caught our orientation show, you saw an ‘improv-game’ that was really just destructive performance art …This is the aspect of the group we have really been trying to stress.”
New Teen Force is composed of Nate Baumgart ’06, Jon Golbe ’06, Molly Gaebe ’07, Jack Reilly ’07, and Nick Pappadopolous ’08. They find a middle ground between strict long form and experimental short form.
“We do a long form that is also a free form,” Baumgart said. “What this means is that we have no structure. This is different from the Armando [which] has particular patterns of characters or scenes We simply take the first suggestion and build a series of characters and story lines that we attempt to intertwine and bounce off one another.”
Where New Teen Force is more freeform, Lunchbox is less so. Formed less than a year ago, the sketch comedy troupe is the only scripted comedy group on campus – excluding standup group, Punchline – and includes John Wesley ’06, Willie Gould ’06, Christopher White ’06, and Eric Wdowiak ’06 and Owen Albin ’07.
“We usually write sketches together as a group, as that’s the best way to get creativity and different opinions on what’s funny” Albin said.
Unlike the other comedy groups, Lunchbox does not rely upon audience interaction as part of its structure.
“Every joke is carefully thought-out, written and rehearsed,” White said.
Wesleyan students can be pretty creative, and nowhere is this creativity more evident than on the comedy stage. Young said his favorite sketch involved creating a Broadway musical
“Ours was called ‘The Last Pansy’ about a Pacifist in World War I,” Young said. “He had to save someone by peeing on his arm, and his song was called ‘A Man’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do.’”
Desperate Measures recently wrote a sketch in which Adam Hetland ’05 played Stephen Hawking as a late-night talk show host.
“He spoke science-gibberish, and ended each interview by killing his guest with science, for example ‘you have become a particle wave, goodbye,’” Lane said.
Baumgart said his favorite New Teen Force scene took place in hell.
“The main characters were the man who runs the puppy chopping booth at the entrance to hell and Adolf Hitler who kept pestering him for more puppies to chop in half,” Baumgart said.
Lunchbox’s funniest sketch came from one member’s history course.
“It’s about a kid at a family dinner and the rest of the family refuses to let him talk at the dinner table,” Albin said. “He eventually is sent to his room where he is magically confronted by … Ben Franklin, who has been living in his closet for 200 years.”
All the troupes will be busy this semester. New Teen Force has plans to travel to Boston University as well as both the Harvard Improv Festival and the Skidmore National Comedy Festival, while Gag Reflex hopes to team up with a Vassar improv troupe and perhaps travel to Vermont. Desperate Measures says it would like to tour but would also like to keep focused on Wesleyan audiences.
“We usually like to do one show a month” Lane said. “And we have an annual twenty-four hour improv marathon that is a pretty big deal.” All the groups foresee at least two shows on campus this semester.
Auditions have been held for each group this week and some will continue into the weekend. New Teen Force continue Friday at 4 p.m. on the top of the Campus Center.
Gag auditions will also be held Friday from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. and Saturday noon-3 p.m. in the Theater Studios, while Desperate Measures will hold auditions Saturday 3 p.m.-5 p.m. For more information, check out the flyers around campus.
Leave a Reply